MAN WHO GAVE FATAL DRUGS TO FRIEND IS SENTENCED

EBENSBURG, Pa. -- Danny Lee Bardell was charged with supplying heroin that
killed a 20-year-old companion. In the dreary world of court-house criminal
files, his sentencing yesterday will go down as just another session where
another judge sent away another drug supplier.

To Cambria County Judge Timothy Creany, though, it didn't seem to be
business as usual.

Reading the letters he got from victim Adam Fowler's family "was
wrenching," he said. His voice broke. He paused, seemingly to hang onto his
composure.

"We expect to bury our parents and our friends," Creany told Bardell, a
strapping, 6-foot tall 25-year-old from southern Blair County's farmlands.
"But we don't expect to bury our children. I still have my ... children. We
can only imagine."

The 32-month-old case once promised to christen a 1998 state law that
carries a minimum five-year prison sentence for suppliers whose drugs kill
users.

Instead, in November, Bardell pleaded no contest to involuntary
manslaughter, drug delivery and reckless endangerment. The case came to an
end yesterday when Creany sentenced Bardell to one to two years in Cambria
County Prison, then topped that with 71/2 years of probation during which
Bardell is supposed to be tested for drugs, get treatment as needed and go
to Narcotics Anonymous meetings three times a week.

Bardell will be at the disposal of the county district attorney to speak
publicly about the evils of drugs, Creany said. If he didn't make amends,
the judge told him, "it'd be just as well if you spent the rest of your
life in prison."

Fowler -- son of a pharmacist, one of two children in a family that lived
in a comfortable home at the edge of the northern Cambria County town of
Carrolltown -- died in his bed in May 1998 after using heroin that Bardell
provided.

"I never meant for any of this to happen," Bardell, son of a former police
officer, told Fowler's parents as he stood goateed, dressed in sweater and
cargo pants, crying. "I wish it would have been me instead of him."

Fowler's father -- ruddy, round-faced and white-haired -- said he wanted to
see Bardell do time in state prison to reflect the gravity of the case.

"But I am not a vengeful man," Dennis Fowler told Creany. "I have no
vengeance in this case."

Outside the courtroom, mother Debbie Fowler, an anti-drug crusader since
her son's death, said heroin came and took their son -- "a kind, gentle
soul" -- quietly and quickly.

"Keep your eyes open," her husband warned. "There was no sign. I was
playing catch with him the day before he died."